


A Study in Sleep

by Ereshkigal



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Didn't Know They Were Dating, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Time, For Science!, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 13:58:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12014214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ereshkigal/pseuds/Ereshkigal
Summary: John and Sherlock go undercover.  Literally.





	A Study in Sleep

“Remind me what we’re doing again?” John asks, as he pulls a few bills out of his wallet for the cabbie. It’s a politeness - not the paying for the cab, but the ‘again’. They both know perfectly well Sherlock had never explained anything in the first place.

“Going undercover,” says Sherlock. He tosses John the duffel which had served as his armrest for much of the ride.

Costumes, John assumes, opening it up. “Um. Sherlock. These are my pyjamas.”

“A sleep lab, John! A sleep researcher has been murdered, and we are going to find out what happened to her.” Sherlock strides through the east entryway of the University College London, and John has to jog to keep up. “It’s a cold case. Well, cooling; just above room temperature. The police have delayed matters with their incompetence not once but twice. First they ruled the case a disappearance, and then they figured the wrong man as the murderer. Why on earth would her boyfriend have tried to convince them it was foul play if he’d done it? Honestly, it’s the minds of the average London policeman that ought to be studied in a lab. The existence of such idiocy truly passes my understanding.”

John suppresses a smile, as he tries not to encourage these rants. “So what did convince them it was a murder?”

Sherlock’s voice drops lower, and his footsteps slow. They must be nearing the lab.

“The victim’s name was Deborah Haynes. She was a second year graduate student, and struggling with her research, which might have explained why she disappeared without taking any of her data or lab notebooks with her, but not why she left without her clothes or laptop or even her suitcase. Therefore, abduction or murder. With no ransom demanded, probability says murder, though we can’t rule abduction out.”

John begins to ask another question, but Sherlock shushes him as he swings open the door to a modern-looking building. “This way.”

The sleep lab is on the second floor, in the center of the building away from windows. It’s not a large lab, at least not from the outside: it’s squeezed in on one side by a lab labeled Chronobiology and by a set of stairs on the other. The door is propped open with a shoe. Sherlock raises an eyebrow at it, peers in for a moment, then knocks.

The door swings open to reveal a young woman wearing a labcoat and only one shoe. “Oh, you must be tonight’s subjects!” she says. “You’re early! Come in!”

John wonders if she always speaks in exclamations. They follow her into a cramped office. It’s stuffed with computers and filing cabinets and one entire wall of the room is windows, a sheet of glass showing nothing of the dark room on the other side.

The woman sits in one chair, struggling to put her shoe on, and gestures for John and Sherlock to take the others. She pops up again a moment later to grab some clipboards from the top of one of the filing cabinets. “Mr. Shane Hanson?” Sherlock holds out a hand.  “And Mr. John Waters, here you go.  I’m Dixie Willis, and I’ll be running you through the study tonight.  Please take a look through your consent forms, ask any questions you have, and sign when you’re ready.”

Dixie watches them intently; it’s a bit disconcerting. John skims the form quickly, pausing only to note that the study ends at seven the next morning. He groans at the thought of staying undercover until then but signs anyway.  Dixie takes the clipboards with a too bright smile. He wonders how many of these sessions she’s had to run.  

“Now, Mr. Waters, you’re the one who’s been having nightmares, correct?”

John tenses. “Ah - yes.  Yes, I have.” He turns to Sherlock, who quickly looks away, glancing about the room as if he hadn’t already deduced all that could be deduced in the first sixty seconds.

“And you’ve been having them for how long, and with what frequency?”  

“A year and a half.” John clears his throat. “Since I returned from service a year and a half ago. I’d say once or twice a week.”

“Four times a week,” Sherlock interjects, surprising him. He adds, softly: “You don’t always wake up.” 

John feels off-kilter again, a sensation that isn’t helped by Dixie asking, “And how long have you been together?”

“Fifteen months,” says Sherlock, right away. As if he knew the question was coming, because he did, of course he did.

John barely hears the rest of the questions. Why are they pretending to be together? What purpose could it serve?  “Sher - Shane.  _Shane_.” He turns to Dixie. “Can we have a moment before you go on?”

He pulls Sherlock out into the corridor. “Why are we pretending to be together?” he hisses. “I thought this was a sleep study.”

“It’s about the effect of a cosleeping partner on the quality of sleep and presence of nightmares. Best keep that to yourself, I’m fairly sure we’re supposed to be blind to it.”

John stares. Really? Just - really? Sherlock wants to sleep with him, but in the weirdest way possible: literally, for a case, in a lab, with god and a research assistant and who knows who else watching. Is this some kind of punishment? Is god toying with him? Is  _Sherlock_ toying with him?

His distress must be plain on his face, because Sherlock replies, in a clipped tone, “I’ll be finished with my observations within an hour, if that. You won’t have to stay in bed with me for very long. Your precious heterosexuality will remain intact.”

“Sherlock, that’s not - “

But he’s already heading back into the lab. With a sigh, John follows him. As he sits he takes Sherlock’s hand, to show he isn’t angry with him, and for verisimilitude, of course. Sherlock startles at the touch, then warms to it, bringing his other hand over to cover John’s.

Dixie smiles at them as they go over the plan for the evening. She has a few more questionnaires to administer, then they’ll hook John up to the recording equipment. “You’ll sleep together for the first part of the evening,” she says, checking her notes. “Then at around three I’ll come separate you, and you’ll spend the second part of the evening apart.”

Dixie stands to get the next questionnaire and as she does, Sherlock stretches, dropping John’s hand so he can reach his full width. His left hand bangs into one of the filing cabinets. “Bit cramped in here, isn’t it?” he says casually.  “Do you do all your work in here?”

“Oh no,” says Dixie. “There’s another lab downstairs that’s more of an office. This is just for running subjects, although you’re right, it’s small. We can only run one at a time. Prisha says if our grants get approved we’ll get the extra space on the other side of chronobio.”

“Prisha?” Sherlock asks politely.

“Dr. Reddy.”  Dixie’s expression goes soft as she runs a hand through blonde curls. If she means to straighten them, it has the opposite effect. With the labcoat, she looks a bit like a mad scientist.  “Dr. Reddy’s been so successful, I’m sure she’ll get the grants. And then we’ll have plenty of space, and money for  _all_ the grad students - ” She stops herself - remembering, maybe, that there’s one less graduate student now.

Sherlock watches her closely. “Has money been tight, then?”

It’s an odd question, coming from a study participant, and Dixie’s clearly thrown by it. John grabs for Sherlock’s hand again. “We’ve talked about this, sweetheart.” He looks at Dixie apologetically. “He’s impossibly nosy.”

After a moment she shrugs. “We ought to get started on the relationship questionnaire. We’ll need a bit of privacy for this. Mr. Hanson, there’s a waiting area down the hall, if you don’t mind.”

Sherlock rises to his feet, and John knows with certainty that he’s headed to the downstairs lab rather than the waiting area. 

As he goes, Dixie turns to the filing cabinets again, rummaging around for something - presumably the questionnaire. “Damn it, Kevin,” she mutters, then turns to John. “Sorry. It’s just that the last person to run a subject misplaced the questionnaires. Although I shouldn’t be too hard on him.”

John can guess why, but a random study participant wouldn’t know, so he says “Oh?”

“A member of our lab disappeared last month,” she says. John makes a noise that he hopes sounds surprised and sympathetic. “It’s been hard on all of us, of course, but Kevin was seeing her.”

John straightens. He’s pretty sure  _that_  wasn’t in Sherlock’s debriefing. “That’s hard,” he says, “to lose someone like that. But I’m sure you’re all supporting him.”

“That’s the thing,” explains Dixie. “No one is. No one knew. I caught them snogging in the downstairs office once and they swore me to secrecy. I suppose they wanted to keep work and romance separate. Oh!”

Dixie finally finds the paper she’s looking for. She attaches it to a clipboard and picks up her pen again. “Now, Mr. Waters, please answer each of these questions with ‘not at all true’, ‘a little true’, ‘somewhat true’, ‘mostly true’, ‘almost completely true’, or ‘completely true’. Do you understand?”

John nods, and readies himself to lie about his relationship with Sherlock.

“ _I feel a strong connection with my partner.”_

Oh. Well, he doesn’t need to lie about that, does he? “Completely true,” he says. Sherlock might drive John mad in a startling variety of ways, but he couldn’t do that if they weren’t connected.

“ _My relationship with my partner makes me happy._ ”

“Does it count if he also makes me deeply annoyed sometimes?” He asks. Dixie grins as she nods. “Completely true, then.”

“ _I can’t imagine ending my relationship with my partner._ ”

John has imagined Sherlock leaving plenty of times. It just seems like the sort of thing he’d do. It’s a minor form of self-torture for John, but he’s never once imagined it the other way round. “Completely true,” he answers again.

“ _I feel that I can confide in my partner about virtually anything._ ”

“What were the options again?” She doesn’t get far before John cuts in. “Yeah, a little true. That’s the one.” He remembers belatedly that he’s meant to be faking a relationship here, but Dixie doesn’t seem surprised. John supposes plenty of real relationships have secrets, although ‘I want you so badly I can’t stand it sometimes’ probably isn’t a common one.

“ _I really feel like part of a team with my partner._ ”

“Yes! I mean, completely true,” says John, relieved to have another easy one.

“ _I cannot imagine another person making me as happy as my partner does._ ”

John has gone through nearly a dozen girlfriends since he started living with Sherlock, and there hasn’t been a date, not a single moment he wouldn’t trade for the highs of solving a case with Sherlock. “Completely true.”

“ _My partner meets all of my needs.”_

John thinks for a moment. There are a lot of things he craves from Sherlock, things he’s never going to get - sex, for instance, and a fridge that doesn’t regularly terrify him - but there are needs he has that only Sherlock can meet. Needs John didn’t even know existed until he found Sherlock. “Somewhat true,” John says quietly.

“That’s it,” says Dixie, putting down the questionnaire.

“What, really?” asks John. “I thought you said it was a relationship questionnaire. Aren’t you going to ask me about, well, you know.”

She knows, and ducks to hide a grin. “Not all relationships include sex, Mr. Waters,” she says. “There are other forms of intimacy that are much more important. And, confidentially - it seems you and Mr. Hanson have most of those. You’re lucky men.”

John sits with that, stunned. Are they in a relationship? Can you  _be_  in a relationship without ever saying so? Or - and he clenches his hands now - would Sherlock answer the questionnaires differently? Would his answers be all ‘a little true’ and ‘not at all true’?

Finally he rouses himself. “I’ll go get, um, Shane.”

As suspected, Sherlock has bypassed the waiting area. John’s grateful for the extra few moments to compose himself. He finds Sherlock at the bottom of the stairs on the first level, gazing at a bulletin board. “What’s missing, John?”

With some effort, John forces himself to focus on the board.  Although it’s small, every centimeter is covered in fliers.  Many are advertisements for openings in the campus’s labs.  “There’s no advert for Dr. Reddy’s lab,” says John.

Sherlock favors him with a pleased sort of look that sets John’s heart pounding. “Exactly, despite the fact that there’s a position suddenly open. And look here,” he points to a spot in the middle of the board. “Staples and bits of paper, as though a flier has been torn away, and underneath it one dated much older than all the others.”

“You think someone tore the advert down?”

Sherlock shrugs. “Could be,” he says, turning away from the board. John trails him up the stairs and back into the lab office.

Dixie is readying a cart of electrodes and monitors. “Right this way,” she says, pushing her way through the door on the other side of the office and flipping the lights on in the main room.  

John glances back at Sherlock, who is casing the room. He looks under the desk, flips through the rubbish with a practiced ease, and then reaches for the questionnaire on the desk. “Hey!” John hisses, coming back to swat his hand away. “How does that help?”

Sherlock straightens and strides past him, ignoring the wary looks that both John and Dixie are now giving him. He throws himself down on the bed and flings a an arm over his face, the beginning of a sulk creeping into his voice as he says, “Wake me when you’re finished.”

Dixie grabs John’s pajamas from the office and hands them to him. “You’ll want to change before we start attaching things,” she says, and slips into the other room to give him some privacy. The shades go down on the glass window as her voice comes through the speakers. “Just give a shout when you’re ready.”

John changes quickly - Sherlock doesn’t stir on the bed - and calls Dixie back in. Thus begins the interminable process of sticking dozens upon dozens of electrodes to his body. Most are attached via a cap that fits on his head, but others go on his temple, his jaw, and his hands, along with a peripheral body thermometer and a heart rate monitor.

“Be careful not to dislodge these,” says Dixie. John nods. “You too, Mr. Hanson. Keep your cuddling, um, restrained.”

John coughs. “Noted.”

“I’ll be in the other room for a while, to make sure the recording equipment is working, but I won’t be there all night. There’s a lilo in our office on the first floor. Please don’t hesitate to wake me if you need anything, just press this button here.” She shows John a buzzer. “If you press that, or if your electrodes come off accidentally, I’ll be alerted and come right away. Okay? Okay. I’ll leave you to get settled.”

Dixie shuts the door behind her with a little wave, an unnecessary one as she immediately reappears in the window. John doesn’t know if she can hear them speaking, so he plays it safe. “You going to change?” he asks Sherlock.

“In a bit,” Sherlock says vaguely. That bastard. John knows he’s planning to solve the case before he has to change. But Sherlock surprises him by taking off his coat and shifting himself on the bed to make room for John. “Come on, lover.”

It doesn’t sound mocking, and yet it feels that way, or maybe it’s the three dozen electrodes pasted to his scalp that has John on edge. He lowers himself gingerly onto the bed.

They lay next to each other, silent and still. It feels a bit like a stakeout, only instead of being hidden and invisible, they’re being thoroughly recorded. John wonders how convincing a couple they make, lying awkwardly on opposite sides of the bed. Sherlock must be thinking the same thing, because he flips to his side suddenly, and snakes an arm over John’s stomach.

John freezes. He can’t help himself, he’s too keyed up. At once Sherlock starts to withdraw, but John stops him with an electrode-covered hand. 

“Hey,” he says. “It’s fine. Restrained cuddling, right?”

A beat, then a chuckle. “Right.”

Sherlock settles in around him. He can feel the man’s breath, just barely, on the back of his neck, and hopes to god Sherlock can’t feel his heart racing. His recordings are going to be a mess - but then, they’ll doubtless be thrown out anyway.

When he’s finally calmed himself, John clears his throat.  “Sherlock - I mean, Shane - “

“She’s gone,” says Sherlock. “Left less than a minute ago. Although really, John, how hard is it to remember an alias?”

“You pick new ones each time!” John protests, but continues quickly before Sherlock can find a retort. “Wait, I wanted to say something. About earlier.” He stares up at the ceiling as he tries to find the right words. “I’m not embarrassed. By faking a gay relationship, I mean. I was just upset that you didn’t give me any warning.”

Sherlock’s frowning. John can’t see it, but he knows that he is. “I do plenty of things without warning you.”

“Yes, and I frequently yell at you for it.”

There’s silence again, stretching long enough that John wonders if the conversation is over. But just as he’s about to change the subject, Sherlock speaks in a low, uncertain voice: “It seemed different. You looked… panicked.”

“Well, I wasn’t, okay?”

“You looked panicked when I picked up the questionnaire as well.” He doesn’t sound accusatory. Just thoughtful, as if he’s reviewing the facts of a case. John tenses, but no deduction follows. Instead, Sherlock lifts his head. “Five more minutes, I think, until we can be sure she’s settled downstairs.”

John wonders if this will be the only time he ever cuddles with Sherlock. It’s marvelous, restrained though it is. He gives in to impulse and covers Sherlock’s arm with his own. “In case she comes back,” he mutters, and Sherlock nestles in closer.

The five minutes stretch out like a gift, feeling more like ten or even twenty. John closes his eyes and imagines they’re in Baker Street. Imagines that this is real. Imagines that he could keep this.

He’s about to drop off into what will surely be pleasant dreams when Sherlock stirs behind him. “Should be safe now,” he says, disentangling, withdrawing.  

John’s daydreams dissolve as he opens his eyes. “Right.” He sits up too, but he’s covered in wires. “A little help here - “ he begins, but Sherlock’s already bounded into the office. 

John sighs and eyes the push cart next to the bed as he weighs the chances of moving it without disconnecting any of the wires. He notices for the first time bits of mud caked to the wheels of the push cart. He’s debating whether it’s worth mentioning to Sherlock - surely he noticed immediately - when his thoughts are interrupted by the brief buzz of the speaker turning on. John expects a string of deductions about the case, but instead Sherlock says, “You don’t think you can confide in me?”

Oh Christ of  _course_  he went straight to the questionnaire. “No, John Waters can’t confide in Shane Hanson,” he snaps back. Which is rubbish, obviously, but does validate his answer quite nicely.

Sherlock peers at him through the big glass window. “If your answers are fake, why should you worry about my seeing them?”

John looks away. “Sherlock - “

“Do I really make you happy?”

There’s a note of vulnerability in his voice, a touch of disbelief, and it makes John swallow his denials. He gazes down at his own clenched hands as he replies, quietly, “You do. You know you do.”

There’s a sharp bang as the speaker is put down, and then Sherlock is in the doorway, the clipboard in his hand and an expression of great intensity on his face. “John.”  

He is sitting on a bed in a lab in his pajamas, attached to a pushcart by dozens of electrodes, and his brilliant best friend is about to deduce his most shameful secret. Things could be better. But he steels himself. “Yes, Sherlock?”

Sherlock waves the clipboard inelegantly. “It says you can’t imagine leaving me. Is that true? No matter what I did? Even if I did something very stupid?”

“Um, probably not. Although I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't take that as license - “

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence, and quite frankly he doesn’t care, because Sherlock leans down and kisses him then, a deep kiss, a desperate one, as if he’s trying to convince John of something, or maybe to make the most out of the only chance he’ll get. When John kisses back he startles like he’s surprised by it; then he leans back into it, with a groan of mingled pleasure and relief.

John pulls Sherlock down onto the bed. He comes willingly, ending up on almost on top of John. One hand strokes John’s face, his temple, heedless of the electrodes; the other grips at his good shoulder. John’s hands trace arcs across Sherlock’s back. They dip low, and Sherlock shivers in his arms.

“God,” John says, breaking away for air. “ _Sherlock_.”

Sherlock drags his lips across John’s neck. Now it’s his turn to groan. But as he runs his hand through Sherlock’s curls they tangle with the wire, and the thought of Dixie coming back and interrupting this is just about the only thing that could give him pause. “Sherlock. Sherlock,” he says, insistently. “The electrodes.”

“Oh, I disabled the alarm ages ago.”

“You  _git_ ,” says John, swatting at his shoulder, and Sherlock’s gaze grows even more heated. John resolves to explore  _that_  later and instead, with military discipline clips out, “What about the mic and the camera?”

“We can delete them later.”

“ _Or_ ,” says John, “we can delete it now, and take a cab back to Baker Street, where we can do whatever we like without worrying about being recorded or interrupted or traumatizing a poor, innocent lab assistant.”

Sherlock huffs a breath. “Fine. But to be clear, you’re the only one worrying about any of those things.” He gives John a searing kiss, then gets up and strides back into the office.

It takes John a good minute to follow him. He has to strip all his monitors off first. “Bit of a shame,” he says aloud, looking down at the mess. “Ruining their data like this.”

“That is the height of hypocrisy given how you binned my mold samples this morning,” Sherlock replies, “not to mention how last week - “

He goes quiet suddenly. John hurries into the room to see what’s happened.

Sherlock is staring at the computer screen in much the same way he’d just been staring at John: as though he wants to kiss it.

“What is it?” asks John.

“I deduced the killer nearly an hour ago, but I wasn’t sure how to prove it, which was annoying, because as you know we have other priorities. But look, John.”

John looks, but he does not observe.

“I deleted the video of us,” explains Sherlock, “but when I went to hard delete it - “

“Hard delete?”

Sherlock gives him a long-suffering look. “Really, John, this is hardly  _Hackers_  territory - “

“Oh, so you delete James Bond but you’ll keep Hackers.“

“ - it’s a feature of every computer. When you delete something it goes to the rubbish folder, and you have to delete it again there to truly get rid of it. And look at this.” It’s another video file, this one dated about a month ago. “The day Deborah Haynes went missing.”

Sherlock double-clicks it, and a grainy video appears. It’s of an empty room, so Sherlock fast-forwards until a figure appears, a dark-haired woman wearing comfortable clothing. John’s not seen a picture of Deborah, but from Sherlock’s satisfied hum this must be her.  She begins to apply the electrodes to herself, settling the ones on her temple and hands but leaving the cap until she has help. It comes only a moment later, in a very familiar form.

“That’s Dixie,” John breathes. “You didn’t say she was the last to see Haynes.”

“No,  _Dixie_  didn’t say so,” replies Sherlock.

“Bit suspicious.”

“So’s this.” Sherlock's fast-forwarded the video, and Deborah’s all hooked up and asleep in bed when Dixie returns. She creeps across the room nervously, the shaking of her hands visible even in the grainy video. She picks up the pillow that Deborah’s not using and places it over her face. Deborah barely struggles. A few minutes later Dixie removes the pillow, checks Deborah’s pulse, and then begins to sob. 

“Why?”

“Why didn’t Haynes fight back?  I’m guessing she was drugged.“

“No, I mean, why would Dixie do it? What’s the motive? I thought it was the secret boyfriend.”

“What secret boyfriend, “ says Sherlock, but answers himself. “Really, John, you should share all the evidence you gather, even the blindingly obvious false leads.”

On screen, Dixie begins to maneuver Deborah’s body onto the emptied equipment cart. It’s a tight fit, but Deborah’s body is slim.  When Dixie pulls a white sheet over the cart it bulges out at the side, but not with anything obviously human.

“Poor, innocent lab assistant,” Sherlock murmurs, stopping the video. He pulls up an email client, launching into an explanation even as he sends himself the evidence, with Lestrade CC’d. “You heard Dixie talk about the funding situation earlier: not enough grants to take on new graduate students. Or at least, that’s what Dr. Reddy must have told her, to explain why she wasn’t offering her a position next year. And so a solution presented itself: get rid of one of the current crop.”

“Brilliant. You, I mean, not her.”  

Sherlock’s blushes a bit at the praise, as usual, but John’s urge to cover his flushed cheekbones with kisses is distinctly stronger than it’s ever been before. John makes himself look away. “So why did she tape the murder in the first place?”  
  
“An oversight, clearly. She was nervous. Never killed before, and not a sociopath, just obsessed and desperate. She must have remembered the video at the last minute, and forgotten or never known about the backup copy. Talented, but inexperienced.” Sherlock gives a disappointed little sigh, as though he’s talking about a footballer whose career was cut short. John clears his throat, and Sherlock straightens. “Yes, well, anyway. That’s that.”

“That’s what?”

“That’s the case. It’s hard to find evidence more damning than a tape of a murder, after all, and if Dixie won’t tell us where the body is, the mud in the wheels of that cart will. I suppose we ought to go downstairs and do a citizen’s arrest, but she  _is_  sleeping…”  

Twenty minutes later finds them in the back seat of a cab. Sherlock had pick-pocketed Dixie’s keys once he figured her for the murderer, and he uses them to lock her in the office, wedging a chair under the doorknob for good measure. Then a quick text to Lestrade, who follows with a quick call to John - “Are you serious? You two wake me up at all hours of the night, but you want to let a  _murderer_  sleep?” - and they pass campus security sprinting by as they head towards the street.

It’s quiet in the cab. A little too quiet; John can’t tell if Sherlock’s having second thoughts. He wants to reach out a hand and lay it on Sherlock’s knee, wants to kiss him, but uncertainty keeps him still.

“The data wasn’t wasted,” says Sherlock suddenly.  

John frowns. “What?”

“It wasn’t wasted. They can’t use it, but I did. I saw. Your heart rate nearly doubled when I touched you. And your skin conductance - “

“What of it?” It comes out rough, almost a growl. Is this some kind experiment for Sherlock? A chance to gather some interesting data? Is it over now, is John about to get binned?

Sherlock looks startled. “You’re upset.”

“You planned this, didn’t you?”

“I’ll admit I considered the possibilities when I took the case - “

John turns, his back rigid, to stare out the window. London city blocks pass by unseen as, inside, sweet new memories take on a sour edge. “I’m not your test subject, Sherlock,” he manages.

“Ah,” says Sherlock, after a long moment. “Ah. I see.”

There’s a rustling sound. John turns to see him pulling a clipboard, that bloody clipboard, from inside his coat. “I was focused on ascertaining both the nature and quantity of your feelings,” Sherlock says. “It did not occur to me until just now that you might have the same concerns.” He hands John the clipboard.

“What - “

“Ask me the questions, John.”

John clears his throat. “Um, all right. ‘ _I feel a strong connection to my partner._ ’”

“Completely true.”

John breathes in sharply. Sherlock motions for him to go on.

“‘ _My relationship with my partner makes me happy_.’“

“Completely true.”

“‘ _I can’t imagine ending - ‘”_

“Completely true,” Sherlock interrupts again, as if he can’t bear to even hear it.

“‘ _I feel that I can confide in my partner about virtually anything.’”_

“Completely true. Well, now, anyway. I had rather a large secret I kept from him until tonight.”

John lets the clipboard drop between them, reaching for Sherlock. He comes willingly, reciting from memory: “I feel like part of a team with my partner,” he says, dipping his head down to brush his lips across John’s. “I cannot imagine another person making me as happy as my partner does.” He takes John’s hand. “My partner meets all of my needs. Or at least, he will when we get back to Baker Street.”

John’s laughing even as he presses his forehead to Sherlock’s. “Damn right I will,” he murmurs, as the cab speeds towards Baker Street.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This story came about when I was scrolling down my dash and saw a friend say their top five tropes were "bed sharing", "for science!", "fake relationship", "first time", and "didn't know they were dating". This premise leaped immediately to mind. 
> 
> I couldn’t quite manage the ‘First Time’ aspect, because writing anything remotely explicit makes me blush and giggle, but I think I did a pretty good job with the others.
> 
> 2\. The questionnaire is an abridged version of the Couples Satisfaction Index, which is, yes, a real thing in the world.
> 
> 3\. Sorry for any Americanisms! This has not been beta'd or britpicked.


End file.
